Perrigo was up 9.5 percent after the company raised its full-year adjusted earnings forecast.

Tensions with North Korea appear to have finally shaken the confidence of U.S. investors, after the S&P 500 opened 0.8% lower, threatening to end its 15-day streak with a closing streak of more than 0.3%, a 90-year record.

Eight of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower, with the consumer discretionary index's 0.59 percent fall leading the decliners.

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The team signed free agent wide receiver Jamari Staples and placed LB Trent Murphy on their Reserve/Injured list. The fourth year veteran out of Stanford had a career year in 2016, totaling nine sacks and 47 combined tackles.

Australian shares were down 1.3 percent, set for a weekly loss of 0.6 percent and Chinese and Hong Kong bluechips lost 1.6 percent and 1.9 percent respectively.

The rhetoric between the USA and North Korea has continued to heat up, leading traders to look to safe havens such as gold and treasuries.

Despite the drop, analysts said the market seemed to be a bit skeptical that the North Korea situation would grow into a major crisis, noting that the losses were still not that deep.

The market's backstop safety asset, gold, edged up to its latest two-month high of $1,288 an ounce.

However, U.S. stocks recovered temporarily late on Wednesday as investors appeared to brush off the geopolitical concerns following encouraging comments from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

About 6.22 billion shares changed hands on US stock exchanges, slightly above the 6.15 billion average for the last 20 sessions.

Selling was broad. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE 6-to-1; on Nasdaq, a 3.60-to-1 ratio favored decliners. The September copper contract was down two cents to US$2.91 a pound.

US crude oil +0.4% at $49.76/bbl.

In overseas trading, stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region saw further downside during trading on Thursday.

On the currency markets, the pound was marginally higher against the United States dollar at 1.30 and up 0.1% versus the euro at 1.11.

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Residents of the United States island of Guam say they're anxious but overall "unworried" amid missile threats from North Korea. Calvo responded by saying he feels safe and confident with Trump's leadership: "I'm glad you're holding the helm, sir".

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Trump's wife Melania also issued a tweet on the violence in Charlottesville. "We are determined to take our country back ". Multiple witnesses told U.S. media the victims were counter-protestors denouncing the so-called "alt-right".

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Goldman Sachs acted as left lead, while Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and RBC came in as bookrunners. Tesla has said it secured at least 455,000 preorders and that 1,800 new reservations are coming in every day.

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Geng reiterated that the U.S. provocation would force China to take further measures to strengthen homeland defense capacity. A Chinese defense spokesman said at the time "the parties concerned don't need to overreact and make a great fuss about it".